Rhea Raj Wants to Achieve Global Superstardom — And Some of the Industry’s Most Powerful Execs Believe She Can

A few weeks ago, Rhea Raj dreamt that she was seated on a roller coaster as it was slowly inching upward, approaching its apex. She’s been thinking about that dream ever since, and how it reflects this point in her personal and professional life.

Explore

See latest videos, charts and news

“I feel like everything I’ve done my whole life has been leading up to this moment,” she tells Billboard. “I’m just waiting for the roller coaster to go down, to go crazy. I’m right there.”

Today, a decade after her first brush with the spotlight, the pop artist is much closer to actualizing that dream. Billboard can announce that Raj has signed a joint label deal with REPUBLIC and HYBE America, in a strategic alliance with 5 Junction Management, which she joined in early 2026. Raj’s signing represents the first joint-venture deal between REPUBLIC and HYBE; KATSEYE, the chart-topping girl group that features Raj’s younger sister Lara as a member, is signed to a similar label arrangement between HYBE and Geffen.

Some of the most powerful executives in the music industry have united as champions of the 26-year-old Indian-American, as Anjula Acharia, the leader of 5 Junction Management and the Warner-backed label 5 Junction Records, has joined forces with REPUBLIC collective founder/chairman Monte Lipman and HYBE America CEO/chairman Isaac Lee. Together, they have identified an explosive crossover potential in Raj, a dynamic and uncompromising pop talent who will be releasing her first single under the new label deal in the coming weeks.

“Rhea sees everything so cohesively, as a total vision, and there’s so much storytelling in that,” says Acharia, who launched 5 Junction last year as a means of delivering South Asian artists to North American listeners and signed Raj as her new management company’s first client in January. Acharia (who teamed with veteran Universal marketing exec Jurgen Grebner on 5 Junction Management) says that the artist that Raj reminds her of is Lady Gaga — whom Acharia helped introduce to Indian audiences near the start of the superstar’s career.

“Every minute, Rhea has an idea for something,” Acharia continues. “‘This is my album cover. This is my single cover. This is the director for my video. These are the brands that align with my ideas and my values.’ What’s so exciting about it for me is, as a South Asian woman, I long sought to put South Asian culture on the map in a way that speaks to global audiences. I think that she does that.”

Raj first encountered Acharia a decade ago, after the Texas native made it to the auditions stage of American Idol in 2016. The 15-year-old aspiring star asked her mother to email Acharia — the longtime manager of Priyanka Chopra Jonas, who had previously built Desi Hits into an internet hub for South Asian music and news — and received an encouraging email in response. “Fast forward exactly 10 years later,” Raj says now, “and I found out that the exact same date [of the email] is the day I officially signed with Anjula for management.”

Before she reached back out to Acharia via DM in 2025, Raj’s professional journey had been winding. Following Idol, she attended NYU’s Clive Davis Institute, bounced between studio sessions during the pandemic and released a string of independent projects and singles throughout the first half of the 2020s, most recently the 2025 EP Commotion.

Her early output was often marked by stylish dance-pop production and slinky hooks, which hadn’t impacted the U.S. mainstream but would occasionally inspire TikTok routines. Raj has taken dance lessons since she was 2 years old, with her mother teaching her the Classical Indian dance Bharatanatyam when she was growing up, and says today that she’s constantly considering choreography while creating.

“When I’m making music, I’m thinking about the music video and the shows,” Raj explains. “I grew up dancing, and that was my entrance into music… so I’m always thinking about movement.”

After the 5 Junction Management deal was announced in January, Acharia asked Raj what her best-case. scenario for a label home would be. She gave two answers: REPUBLIC and HYBE. Acharia gave Lipman a ring and arranged a dinner with the label head, as well as REPUBLIC Collective president/CEO Jeffrey Remedios, to meet her new management client.

“I’ve known Anjula for 20 years — she’s a force of nature,” says Lipman. He and Acharia had long talked about working together, and Raj immediately impressed him enough to bring REPUBLIC on board. “[Rhea] can sing, she can dance, she’s incredibly articulate, she’s incredibly driven,” Lipman says. “I was very intrigued, and now, we’re completely focused and determined as her partners.”

Soon, Acharia also linked up with Lee, who described the joint venture between REPUBLIC and HYBE as “a no-brainer. I mean, when you have someone like Anjula, and Monte, and a talent like Rhea, you’re just a lucky guy.”

The opportunity also arrived at a moment in which “HYBE is seriously investing in India,” Lee notes. The label recently announced expanded auditions across India for an in-the-works global girl group; meanwhile, Raj’s 20-year-old sister Lara has become one of the most prominent Indian-American voices in the North American music industry as part of the HYBE group KATSEYE, which earned its first Billboard 200 chart-topper with the WILD EP last month.

The Raj sisters have remained extremely close as they’ve embarked on separate artistic paths. “We’re best friends,” Raj says of Lara. “This journey has been so beautiful and magical, and we trust each other’s creative instincts so deeply. We’re constantly sharing music with each other, and talking about creative ideas. She’s my most trusted person with that stuff.”

In recent weeks, Raj has launched new campaigns with MAC Cosmetics and Toyota, and snagged a slot on the 2027 Lollapalooza India lineup. Now, she’s preparing to roll out the first taste of the music project that she recorded with veteran vocal producer Kuk Harrell (Rihanna, Justin Bieber) and co-produced herself. Her next single is her most kinetic musical moment to date, a thundering dancefloor missive with skittering keys and a relentless pace — think 2010s turbo-pop, but with a sample of a classic ‘70s Indian single serving as a winking intro.

For Acharia, Raj could help deliver a decades-long goal of seeing a South Asian artist establish a foothold at top 40 within this hemisphere. “As a young brown girl in Britain, that’s what I dreamt about,” she says. “And now you have Rhea, and Lara’s out there with KATSEYE, and to see faces like that is really gratifying. I went through my entire childhood never seeing that, so the fact that a whole generation is going to grow up and see that as normal is amazing.”

“I think she’s gonna be an inspiration for a lot of young women in India, and in the Indian diaspora,” Lee says, “and we love to be part of that journey.”

Ultimately, that type of visibility is the most rewarding part of this moment for Raj, and deflates any pressure created by having “two rock star labels behind me, and rock star management,” as she puts it. As the daughter of immigrants who grew up absorbing traditional Indian culture and American pop touchstones, Raj finds herself uniquely positioned to refract the influence of South Asian music into the U.S. mainstream — now with multiple industry heavyweights in her corner.

“I want people that look like me, especially young girls, to feel empowered and be bold, and chase after their dreams, whatever that is that they love doing,” says Raj. “It’s so important to see someone that looks like you on those stages, and know that you can you can be there, too.”